"It's OK to rewrite computer manuals, it's OK to have a Plain English law for well-off people to understand their mortgages, but when I want the food stamp applications written more simply, I'm accused of wanting to 'dummy down' things," says Fox.

In Canada, the experts don't like Fox's theories but they haven't got any better explanations for the lack of official action.

Despite pages of suggested changes in Manning's 1980 study, few of the unreadable legal publications have been revised. And Ontario, which discovered in 1985 that most health and safety material couldn't be read by workers, still hands out many of the same unintelligible pamphlets. The ministry of citizenship and culture, however, last year issued a Plain English guide to government services for immigrants.

Mostly, when governments do try, the attempts appear half-hearted.

Ruth Baldwin, a Plain English consultant based in Ottawa, advised a group of federal officials who prepare sheets inserted with family allowance cheques. It took six months to reduce a change-of-address form from two pages to one, says Baldwin.

"I don't think those people were really convinced about what they were doing; they haven't had us back," she says.

They should. The readability survey rated three family allowance inserts at Grade 10 to 12 reading levels, higher than the education of at least five million Canadians.

EDITOR'S NOTE: York Universities Gary Bunch was asked to rate this article by Peter Calamai using the Fry and Dale-Chall standards, it was marked as between a Grade 11 and first-year university level.